Help Keep MozillaZine in Business

Sunday February 16th, 2003

It's time to bail out MozillaZine again! If you think MozillaZine is a valuable community resource, please consider donating to us. While other organisations looking for donations may be happy to accept time, equipment or expertise, we're looking for cold hard cash.

If you donate to MozillaZine, you will help to ensure that we can continue to provide the Mozilla community with up-to-the-minute news, first class forums and informative developer weblogs. If you don't donate to MozillaZine, the Mozilla community could just be left with bug counts and bad grammar.

Our preferred way of receiving donations is via PayPal. Use one of the buttons that appear on each page. Think big numbers. If you prefer to receive something tangible for your cash, there's also our CafePress.com store but that doesn't make us nearly as much money.

Well, personally, I don't think that ads will help at all. If MozillaZine adds banners, I'll be dissapointed for sure, but then I'll just block the advertisements from their originating server. (Thanks to Image->Context Menu->Block Images from this Server).

I don't know about you, but I'm going to donate to MozillaZine! Who's with me?
No sé de Uds., pero ¡voy a donar a MozillaZine! ¿Quienes están conmigo?

there are so many sites out there that are littered with flashing animated crap that its almost impossible to read the actual articles. non animated ads provide so little revenue that all sites will move incresingly towards these if they want ot support themselves on ads alone (look at slashdot). ads like this are utterly killing the interent experience. as soon as moz is able to block other content types like flash, i will block them all and be much happier. ever obtrusive and distracting ads are a dead end source of revenue, the future is a pbs like subscription model that k5 and mozzine are pushing, and i'm very fond of salon.com's "do 1 long click through add and get access all day to the premium content" model a lot.

see bugs for this feature's origin. also: users can turn this back on with some javascript, which I will not reveal. (generally, banks should consider this hacking, and irresponsible behavior at a public terminal not a bug on Mozilla's part.)

ok.. I don't think they can fix it anyway.

www.bookmarklets.com/forms.htm strips the form tag's autocomplete attribute from any forms on the page (locally.)

For some criticism of PayPal, and links to "horror stories", see my page:

http://paypal.haters.info/

In their favor, however, the number of "horror stories" does seem to be reducing with time, so perhaps their management isn't quite as atrocious as it once was. They do, however, still freeze people's accounts if they have the audacity to log in while traveling to a banned country, and it can be really difficult to extricate yourself from their bureaucracy when such a thing happens.

I kept up a boycott of PayPal for quite a while, but finally gave in and started occasional use of it due to the distressing prevalence of sites that refuse to allow any alternative transfer means (whether for affiliate programs paying me, or sites seeking donations like yours), but I'd still much prefer it if a different method were provided that doesn't require use of that service.

For those who must use PayPal, I'd suggest transferring out all or most of your received funds quickly, rather than allowing any sizable balance to stay there subject to getting frozen.

Like /. has, all comments in a nested fashion in thread not like threaded single comments where you have to hog up the bandwidth for every comment or flat mode where you can't understand who's answering what.

Direct some of that hosting cash to your poor webmaster and give us nested comments!

I second that! Right now, I'm opening a new tab for each thread. Lots of bandwith could be saved if all the content could be on one page, orderly and nested. Why doesn't MZ use something like Slash code: http://slashcode.com/ ? If posters could preview their comments, they wouldn't have to repost them with corrections (mainly for botched links and lack of line breaks).

There are lots of ways that MozillaZine could conserve bandwith.
(1) Allow nested comment display (as mentioned above).
(2) Detect Gecko-based and IE5+ user agents, and serve up a CSS-formatted page instead of using all those font tags.
(3) Fix the issue that results in multiple posts of the same comment.
(4) Use b (bold) tags instead of strong tags. They are rendered exactly the same. It's only a few bytes saved here and there, but being downloaded 7 million times a month, it can make a difference.
(5) Implement a system like Slashdot that defines all those features on the sidebar (MZ links, Google search, mozilla.org links, poll, older news) as slashboxes, which logged-in members can choose to turn off.
(6) Advertisements. Why not? It wouldn't bother me a bit, as long as they're not wildly flashing psychadelic colors like those x10 camera ads. I click on ThinkGeek ads sometimes. They have lots of cool stuff.

If I may present my opinion on this subject, please. I am trying not to be rude at all but I wanted to say a few things. If you need money you really should place some ads. Asking people for money or setting up store items to make profit never works. Hell, I didn't even know about that store until today. :)

It'll be sad to see you go. This is the first sign of serious trouble. I've been wanting to donate to several sites but I lost my job and have no money. What I've seen since then is some of them make deals with companies to stay afloat(i.e. Shacknews with Speakeasy & AMD). However most others shut the sites down. :/ Guys just do that and sign up with AOL or something. You support some of their products, correct? Dumb question for sure and I'm sorry, but had to ask why you haven't yet done that.

There's no point to donations at this point. Right now I don't give money because it's the wrong situation to do it in. What if I give $50 and you shut the site down in 3 months? It's too risky an investment in that context. I'd rather donate to EXPAND the site to let it prosper more as long as I know it's going to stay around. That's important to me.

So here's your options.

A. Hope u get enough through paypal only constantly for like what? 5 years?
B. Put properly targeted ads on the site that would interest members. OMG! Do a Shacknews thing and ask people to fill out a anonymous profile! Ad companies love those thingies :)
C. Strip the site of all bandwidth things like forums, polls.... etc.
D. Merge with another website. Hint, Mozilla.org has a lot your news items on it anyway. Just ask them if they'd like more news events on the site plus user feedback. I've always thought of this site as an extendtion of Mozilla.org anyway :)
E. Close the site

It's your choice. I've seen too many sites ask for donations. Subscription base the forums or something. Do that first before asking for donations. Usually that should be a last resort. Again that's just my personal opinion. Yes I know that I don't know the whole situation for this site. I understand that but just wanted to say this anyway. Sorry. :/ Although my thinking makes me believe you guys don't have time to set anything up like that which in case it would make sense for this website to leave.

For me I come here for news only. I used to read opinions of Mozilla releases but rarely read them anymore. My interest is what will happen next for Mozilla and how these side projects (chimera, phonix... ect) will affect it plus what new features will be added that would convince me to use Mozilla instead. All these recent releases don't impress me much. A new interface is definately needed where there are no damn msgbox popups. "Cannot connect to site". Geeez, just create a warning area bar and leave it like that. Or how about this? Why do we have 2 bookmark editing areas? One on the sidebar and bookmark manager. Dude. Pick one and stick with it. I'd love to see EVERYTHING tossed into the sidebar. For consistencies sake. Preferences, bookmarks, and any other options. The currect preference menu makes me want to puke. It's cute how some sub directy names can't be completely seen on the left side. Privacy & security --> Master Passwo.... Ahem. Just plain stupid. Simple common interface. That's all I ask. Hehe, oh well. /rant :)

Over a year ago they asked for donations to keep the site alive and people were willing to do it because they don't want to see ads. They even stripped down the site for a bit to reduce bandwidth while they raised enough money. It works just fine this way and they raised enough money so that they were able to implement an even better forum section then they had before. If they don't get enough money they'll shut down and we'll go elsewhere. I for one would rather not see ads on this site.

The situation was much more serious then. Right now, it's not so bad. It's also been far more widely anticipated. And the most recent hosting bill has actually been paid; it's just that the money came from Jason Kersey's back pocket. Even if no-one donated, the site would still be good for another year.

"I've been wanting to donate to several sites but I lost my job and have no money."

No-one expects you to donate if you can't afford it. No-one expects you to donate even if you can afford it. Donations are entirely optional. No-one should feel forced to contribute.

"There's no point to donations at this point."

MozillaZine's PayPal balance suggests otherwise. :-)

"Right now I don't give money because it's the wrong situation to do it in. What if I give $50 and you shut the site down in 3 months? It's too risky an investment in that context."

So don't donate. No-one's going to hold it against you.

"So here's your options.

"A. Hope u get enough through paypal only constantly for like what? 5 years?"

That would appear to be working so far.

"B. Put properly targeted ads on the site that would interest members. OMG! Do a Shacknews thing and ask people to fill out a anonymous profile! Ad companies love those thingies :)"

MozillaZine has run ads in the past. They also always seemed to be those 'Punch the f*cking monkey' ones. People would probably just block them anyway.

"C. Strip the site of all bandwidth things like forums, polls.... etc."

But then it wouldn't be as good.

"D. Merge with another website. Hint, Mozilla.org has a lot your news items on it anyway. Just ask them if they'd like more news events on the site plus user feedback. I've always thought of this site as an extendtion of Mozilla.org anyway :)"

mozilla.org is the official site of, er, mozilla.org. Merging with them wouldn't really be an option because MozillaZine would lose its independence.

"E. Close the site"

That really would be the last resort.

"I've seen too many sites ask for donations. Subscription base the forums or something. Do that first before asking for donations. Usually that should be a last resort."

I think donations are preferable to subscriptions. Subscriptions force people to pay if they want to use the site. Donations keep it free and accessible to everyone. And for some reason (stupidity, naivity, or maybe even generousity) they work! Sure, maybe subscriptions looks like a "viable and forward-thinking business model" whereas donations looks like desperation. But we don't care. We have no shame. :-)

I for one am very glad you're going to donations route. Unlike going with subscriptions or ads, it assumes people visiting the site care about it and are willing to invest in it without being forced to do so, which (luckily) often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy precisely because of this, while also making sure not to alienate those people who for whatever reason are currently unable to donate.
I myself fall in the latter catagory for now. Next year however...? I'm not certain, but chances are that by then I will be able to pay. Hopefully at that time there'll be some other service than PayPal though; I've seen a few too many horror stories about it to think lightly about signing up with them.

> Why do we have 2 bookmark editing areas? One on the sidebar and bookmark manager. Dude. Pick one and stick with it. I'd love to see EVERYTHING tossed into the sidebar.

Ok, so you would like to see that stuff in the sidebar. Not all of us agree. I hate the sidebar; the first thing I did when I first tried NS6 was X that thing out of there, and the same is true of Mozilla. I have never used it and I never will. If there was not another way to edit the bookmarks other than the sidebar, I would have to open bookmarks.html in composer to edit it... not what I could call ideal. There are two ways to do it because some people like the sidebar and some do not. It makes sense. It is redundant, but versatility requires redundancy sometimes.

As for ads-- yes, if they were put on here, we would all block them, given that most, if not all, of us that read this site use Mozilla or one of its derivatives. Would that mean that you would not get paid for the ads? I have no idea how that works. I've been approached by people that claim to want to put ads on my site, but I never replied...

I really like Mozilla and part of the reason is choice!
I really don't like the sidebar and never ever use it. Making that the only place bookmarks are available would drive me to another browser. Sounds like getting rid of the sidebar would drive you to another browser.

I'm also perfectly OK with the current preferences dialog. I see all of the names just fine, but dialogs (unless they're resizable which is highly desireable but a pain to implement) are always a problem with Text size. They are supposed to resize based on the font size they use, but that doesn't always work.

Lastly, I don't use MozillaZine that often, but I'd consider contributing a small amount (I like that option way better than a subscription option) but I won't use PayPal.

Paypal is hell to use outside of the USA. Even if you've got an American-based credit card they insist on some redicoulous activation scheme where you have to look on your statement for a code or something. And if you've got a british debit card like Switch or Solo then its useless.

I live in Germany and have a PayPal account. I found it quite simple and logical. All the questions and confirmations they requested made sense and seemed necessary to maintain the security of my money. That is a good thing.

I'm really not a big paypal fan either. If you don't mind telling, what kind of margins do you guys make on the cafepress stuff? That way I can order enough to make sure that I'm giving you a sizable enough donation, and I'm getting some zealot gear to go into battle with!

CafePress is pretty bad in terms of margins. While they certainly deserve the lion's share of any sale, since they are doing all the work, a base price of $14 for a T-Shirt just won't cut it. Plus their quality isn't *that* great. We've had some experience with them for fund raising and it turned out to be a losing proposition. I also know someone who has ordered 100 mugs for his event for resale. Their base price on the mug was so steep that the market wouldn't carry it and he ended up promoting his event, but losing quite a bit of his *mug investment*.

We (Chris, Jason and I) had a long discussion about this last night and we think mod_gz (or rather its predecessor mod_gzip) is enabled. Do you know of any way of finding out for sure? Because we couldn't figure it out. :-)

1. sits towards the right side of the page
2. do not spoil the theme of the site
3. do not take up too much white space
4. do not have too much animation(loop once, 2-3 seconds animation is fine with me)
5. appear in between page transits once in a while(like a 3 second commercial in every 20 pages)
6. I might be interested in(like pleasing to eyes)

I do block(images) advertisements that are
1. popup
2. appear on top of page
3. appear in the middle of an article
4. appear on the left side of the page
5. offensive in contents

One of the site where I do not block ads (and possibly click through the ads) is - http://news.reuters.com/

If you look at Mozillazine code, there is a LOT of useless HTML code used for layout. Use CSS and you will probably drop file size by 20%-30%, perhaps more. You will save your bandwidth and pages will display faster for your users.

I'm going to assume you had the comma in the wrong place, and meant 5,000 (hey, I live in the US, I'm allowed to do such things). If so, I can guarantee Alex will keep posting, and I'll enjoy putting a down payment on a new car!

"I'll pay $50,00 if Alex Bishop (whom I will never call Blake again) guarantees that he will keep posting his 'sense of humour'... "

Are you mocking my finely-honed wit?

Unlike Kerz, I'm going to assume you had the comma in the wrong place, and meant 50,000 (hey, I live in the UK, I'm allowed to do such things). If so, I can guarantee I will keep posting, and I'll enjoy moving into my new beach house in Rio!

He probably meant $50.00 . In most European countries, the function of period and comma is the reverse of what US residents are used to. So, for example, in Euro-speak, our competent and respected president earns 400.000,00 dollars a year.

I have already made my monetary contribution, but i still have a suggestion. There are people here asking exactly what the money's going towards. It would be nice if you just posted your expenses and money reserves on-line. This is what the AbiWord project does, way down at the end of the AbiWord Weekly News:
http://www.abisource.com/information/news/2003/awn130.phtml
. That way, people can know when money is needed, they know how much is needed, and they also know that it's not being wasted on frivolous expenses.

There's been a lot of whining here about asking readers for donations. Please be aware that many of us are quite happy liviing without annoying ads and that we don't mind being asked to caugh up a little money once a year.

One last thing, those tote bags in the MozillaZine store are very high quality and the colors of the MozillaZine logo are beautiful. (And the design is on both sides of the bag.) I love mine. I'm even using it today. MozillaZine gets a lot more money if you just donate directly, but if you need a nice tote bag, go for it!

"It would be nice if you just posted your expenses and money reserves on-line."

Expenses are hosting (annual fee primarily based on data transfer) and, er, that's it. The domain is registered until 2007 so there's not much to worry about there. The most recent hosting bill (what we're asking the readers to cover now) is $990. I'm not sure how much is in the kitty right now but last night it was over $600. Before the donations appeal started it was about $18.

Obviously, the more money we get now, the longer it'll be until we have to do this again. And if we get tons and tons, we can think about making improvements to the site. And I can get that beach house in Rio. ;-)

Okay, but my idea wasn't to tell me the figures in a thread. (How many people will see that?) My suggestion is to make the expenses and income information permanently available, easily accessible, and routinely updated. Make a page with expense and income info and link it to your front page. Update it periodically, say every week or every month. I am suggesting that you do something like the AbiWord Weekly News does.

Your income and balances would require periodic updating (not necessarily weekly, how about monthly?). Did you look at the AbiWord link i gave as an example? They post how much money is "in the kitty" and what donations they've received that week. I'm only suggesting this because i think that such transparency would encourage donations. As it stands, MozillaZine has a "donate" button, but there's no indication anywhere on the site as to how much money it takes to run the site, what the money is used for, and whether money is actually needed or is in surplus at any given time.

Please don't take my suggestion as whining. I have already made donations this year and last, and i have purchased merchandise through the store. I just think that being up front about expenses and balances would encourage more people to donate. Few people probably realize how much it really costs to run this site. Even public television and radio stations, during pledge drives, state goals (that is, specific targeted amounts) and periodic updates on progress towards meeting those goals. They must do this because it works.

I'm not going to waste my time digging up (again) the serious problems with using PayPal -- I'm sure you all can use Google to find out for yourself. And the thin margins via CafePress have already been illustrated in this forum. Give us an address to mail a check to! (and who to make it out to).

Well, I've added stickers to the store that have a 5, 10, or 20 dollar markup on them, if you feel better about using cafepress. If not, we'll have other means of donation setup for next time we beg :).

You should put up a status bar on the goal (amount of money) needed to keep the MozillaZine up.

make an objective, maybe give out a prize? eg, person to donate most gets the to download the first release of the next stable release?)
do some motivation, and add a mailing address where we can send cheques to. noone trusts paypal.